Betina Krahn Page 11

  While he was staring in fascination at the electrical light, she went to the large desk in the center of the library and raised the telephone to her ear. The sound of her voice drew his attention back to her and he joined her, scrutinizing the device in her hand. It was a wooden handle fitted with two black cones, one flattened and one bent slightly, that she held to her ear and mouth. The device was attached by a cord to a polished cherry box fitted with a crank that looked like a coffee-grinder handle.

  “No need to rush,” she said, speaking succinctly into one of the cones. “We’re keeping Robbie cool with baths and using calamine and soda poultices for the itching. The doctor said it’s something he’ll just have to suffer through.” Her eyes narrowed and she held the listening part away from her ear. Bear could have sworn he heard the sound of raspy laughter from the earpiece. After a moment she returned it to her ear and said tersely, “Good-bye, Hardwell.” As she returned the telephone to its metal cradle, he stared at the polished box and receiver on the desk.

  “You can honestly talk to people through that box and wires.” He rubbed his chin. “I read about these things in the newspapers on the train. I had no idea you had ‘telephones’ here.”

  “Baltimore is a very progressive city. We can reach any one of more than two thousand people, and new lines are being strung all the time. We have just added service to Cumberland, Frostburg, Annapolis, and Frederick—”

  “We?”

  “I … invested. Our Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone stock is soaring.” She lowered her gaze to the contraption. “Would you like to talk to someone?”

  The only person he wanted—needed—to talk to was standing across the corner of a desk from him. But distance wasn’t the only difficulty to be overcome in communication. With all that he had to say to her, he found himself staring speechlessly at the golden highlights in her hair.

  He straightened abruptly.

  “How about calling your friend Kenwood? We could ask if he’s broken out in spots yet.”

  When she looked up he could tell she was trying desperately not to smile. “He doesn’t have a telephone … or ‘spots’ … yet.”

  Turning away, he strolled around the cluttered library. The floor-to-ceiling shelves were stocked with expensive leather-bound volumes, some of which had been displaced to stacks on the floor by mechanical objects that defied easy identification. He skirted the paper-strewn desk in the center of the room and passed a leather sofa piled with rolled-up documents and legal folios, on his way to a set of makeshift shelves below the windows.

  He stared at the bewildering assortment of gadgets and materials, then picked up something that looked like a rug beater with a metal cup on the handle end. Then he peered into a pair of glass cylinders filled with red liquid and connected by a coil of copper pipe and studied what looked like a small metal horn projecting from a tin box to which bare copper wires were attached.

  “What is this stuff?”

  “Progress.” She strolled closer, smiling at his skeptical expression. “Or steps on the way to it. They’re inventions I’ve purchased … that is, I’ve bought the rights to manufacture.”

  He thought of the inventor who had accosted her at the Vassars’ party. Scowling, he held up the “rug beater.” “You actually intend to produce this?”

  “I consider it more an investment in the inventor than the invention.”

  As he mulled that over, something off to the side caught his eye. He turned and found himself facing a full-sized pair of locomotive wheels set back into the wall by the door. They were attached by a driving rod and rested on a piece of steel rail.

  “What the devil are these doing here?” He strode over to them and ran his hands over their polished curves. “They look like Baldwin wheels.”

  “They are,” she said, coming to stand beside him. “Mr. Baldwin sent me this pair of wheels when I—”

  “Don’t tell me. You invested in his engine company.” His stomach tightened as she nodded. Baldwin Engine Company, for God’s sake. Was there anything she didn’t own a piece of? He stared at them, his heart pounding.

  Just beside that massive set of driving wheels, on the ledge of the nearest bookshelf, was a miniature passenger car sitting on a bit of simulated track. He leaned to get a better look, traced the outline of the roof, and bent to peer into the windows. The interior was elegantly rendered in lush green velvet and highly polished mahogany; everything was perfectly to scale, including a tiny brass spittoon and sleeping berths complete with miniature sheets and pillows. He glanced at the gilt lettering above the side windows.

  “A Pullman car.” He frowned, studying it.

  “Mr. Pullman was nice enough to send us a model of our own personal car. My father ordered one just before he died.” She bent beside him to look in the windows. “This was my favorite thing in the whole world when I was a little girl. I took a thousand trips in this little car … London, France, India, China …”

  Her eyes and voice softened as she pointed to a curtain-draped berth at the rear of the little car and smiled. “That was always my bed. At night I always refused to draw the shades because I wanted to imagine lying on my bed and watching the moon chase the car along the tracks. Then every morning I had breakfast in a different country and read books about—” She halted and straightened abruptly, staring at that little car with a tumultuous look.

  She struggled internally for a moment and when she spoke again her words were clipped and efficient. “How many Pullman cars have you ordered for your new railroad?”

  Bear was still focused on that miniature train car and the jarring contrast it posed to a pair of five-foot driving wheels. One spoke of an investor’s power and determination and the other was an unexpected glimpse into the dreams of a little girl’s heart. He had to shake his head as he straightened, to make himself register the question. She had asked about his railroad … his …

  “None,” he answered. “It’s a short line. Mostly freight. Beef and grain. We won’t usually have passengers.”

  She pounced on that statement. “Over two hundred miles of track that opens up new land to settlement? You’ll have people coming and going constantly. People have to move themselves and their households and their stock and equipment. You’ll have to have at least one or two sleepers, and Mr. Pullman’s cars are by far the best.”

  He scrambled to meet her gaze and assessment, caught off guard by her changed mood.

  “They’re overpriced,” he said shortly. “Farmers don’t need down pillows and velvet seats. The line’s not long enough for anybody to use it for a bed.”

  “But it would be foolish not to add that capacity,” she said with equal terseness, “when you have to buy a few passenger cars anyway.”

  A few passenger cars here, a few Pullman cars there … he could see her waving a privileged hand and making them appear instantly on the track. She had no idea what it took for a struggling railroad to come up with the cash for something as luxurious as a Pullman Sleeping Car. Or something as basic as steel and timber. Or cranes and equipment. Or a serviceable old engine or two.

  Irritably, he turned away and spotted on a nearby shelf a pair of metal cylinders with shafts, attached to rubber hoses and a curved metal contraption fitted with what could only be called a piston. Reaching for the curved part, turning it over and over, he examined the workmanship and interplay of parts. A brake shoe … with a pressure line and cylinder attached. Recognition flooded him. He’d never seen the working parts of a Westinghouse air brake outside of a rail car. How the heck did she get hold of—

  “That was sent to me by—”

  “George Westinghouse,” he supplied.

  “That’s right.” She seemed pleased that he recognized it. “Soon the whole railroad industry will be using them. They’re so much safer that there is talk that the government in Washington may soon require them on all train cars.”

  “Just what railroaders need,” he muttered, replacing the brake shoe on the sh
elf, “more government interference.”

  “I hardly think it’s interference. They’re simply trying to use new ideas and equipment to make the rails safer.”

  “Safer?” He reached for and held up one of the hoses. “These things can be a menace. The pressure holds fine in the engine and first few cars, but in anything over five cars, the pressure drops and the rear cars don’t brake at all. And since there aren’t enough brakemen to turn the hand brakes, the cars go runaway and overtake the front cars on the slightest downward grade. There isn’t a curve in Colorado or Wyoming that hasn’t seen cars hop rails because of these damned things.”

  She seemed indignant. “That’s absurd. They’re ten times safer than the old hand brakes. They’ve saved hundreds of brakemen’s lives.” She stalked closer and pulled the main pressure cylinders from the shelf. “And anyway, these are the new and improved brakes.”

  “New and improved?” He gave a skeptical huff.

  “Mr. Westinghouse has added a new valve system to maintain pressure, so the rear cars will have just as much braking power as the engine and tender. By the time they’re installed in all new cars and engines and refitted into existing cars—”

  “Mr. Westinghouse will be a damn sight richer than he already is,” he declared. “Look … every requirement those bean heads in Washington dream up just drives up costs for railroaders.”

  “Who make plenty of profit as it is,” she responded firmly.

  He caught his four-letter rebuttal before it escaped. Purging the blue from his thoughts, he glowered at her ladylike appearance and her privileged surroundings. For all her knowledge of railroads, her experience was sorely limited. She might have seen the mighty B&O laying track along an existing Maryland road or across gently rolling Tidewater countryside, but she had absolutely no idea what it took to build a railroad under less-than-civilized conditions.

  “Tell me, Miss Wingate”—his voice carried a fierce edge—“how much profit does a man deserve when he sinks his life’s savings into land and equipment and works night and day to lay track … under a searing sun in summer and through life-threatening cold in winter … over loose, stony terrain that refuses to hold a proper grade or through hostile hills that make you chisel one out of a wall of granite … despite shortages of men and equipment and raids by Indians who don’t like what the Iron Horse does to their land and their buffalo … without proper sleep and decent food for weeks at a time … battling foul weather, black flies, and bad water … using tools so cold your skin freezes to them … and steel so hot it burns your hands to blisters?” He halted long enough to draw breath and his voice lowered to a raw, mesmerizing vibration.

  “Just how much profit compensates a man for pouring his guts and dreams out in a long steel ribbon that helps to bind a nation and build a country?”

  The heat and conviction in his words left no doubt in Diamond’s mind that every image he conjured had been drawn from his personal experience. He wasn’t talking about just any railroad entrepreneur; he was talking about his own battles with stubborn nature, hostile populations and elements, and brutal working conditions. She thought of the rail construction she had seen and made herself imagine it a thousand miles from anywhere … crews of tough, independent men … impossible terrain … storms, shortages, and prolonged isolation.

  The copper eyes poised above her suddenly seemed as clear as Baltic amber. Through them she glimpsed the workings of the inner man. He was the proud, stubborn, powerful sort of man who made big things like railroads happen … one of that unique breed who poured out their dreams along with their blood and sweat and souls into the steel ribbons of Progress that spanned a continent.

  In that moment, she sensed that she had touched the essence of him, that she now knew him in ways she could spend a lifetime trying to describe.

  “A man who pours his body and soul into building a railroad, who drives railroad crews with his own grit and determination, who braves both the elements and the odds … such a man doesn’t expect to be paid in mere coin.” She watched in dismay as her words struck sparks.

  “Oh, no?” He gave an irritable laugh. “So you think the country’s builders ought to unselfishly spend their last dollar for the greater good, do you? What about Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and John Work Garrett and James J. Hill? Do you honestly think they would have lifted a finger toward building a railroad without the expectation of profit? It takes money to make money, Miss Wingate.” He leaned closer. “You of all people should know that. Progress is a very expensive commodity.”

  A shiver raced up her spine as his words echoed down through every layer of her awareness, all the way to her well-guarded core. Warmth welled up unexpectedly in her, softening her posture and pooling in her eyes.

  “My exact words on a number of occasions,” she said quietly, searching him. “This is a rare moment, Mr. McQuaid. We actually agree on something.”

  Her softening momentarily disarmed him. He was primed for a battle royal and, instead, found himself facing no discernible opposition.

  They agreed.

  He was drawn to her eyes for confirmation and had the curious sensation of stepping into a rushing Montana stream. That warm, swirling blue drew the heat from his temper, leaving only a steamy, lingering glow of anticipation.

  Suddenly the fact that they had come toe to toe and eye to eye while making their points took on an entirely different potential. His head filled with the faint scent of strawberries. Her scent. Every square inch of his skin was suddenly hot and tingling with awareness of her.

  “And just what is it that we agree on? Progress or railroads or profit or … something else?”

  She tilted her head up, maintaining the visual bridge between them, along which all sorts of breathtaking commerce was passing.

  “Progress, Mr. McQuaid. I’m a great believer in progress.”

  “Bear,” he reminded her.

  “Bear.” Her breath quickened. “And in the men who make progress happen.”

  “Men who make progress.” A wicked grin curled one side of his mouth as it lowered toward hers. “Does that include me? Am I making progress?”

  “Progress?” Her gaze sought his as she felt his breath bathing her lips. “I believe you’re one of the most progressive men I’ve ever met.”

  Shameless hussy, some small prune-proper part of her whispered. But the pounding of her heart and the stark new sensitivity of her skin inured her to it.

  He dragged his lips lightly across hers, back and forth, mesmerizing her with the “almost” of the kiss that was coming. If she raised her chin just a fraction of an inch, she would fulfill that luscious promise of contact, but she would also end this delectable suspension in time and desire. And it was so entrancing to hover just at the threshold of pleasure, experiencing new sensations of wonder and longing.

  Then, with a soft rushing sound that might have been her breath escaping—or his—he ended the suspense and joined their mouths.

  It was like being enveloped in a warm cloud, she thought. His lips were surprisingly soft and deliciously expressive against hers. Pleasure radiated through her, beginning at that delicious point of contact and spreading slowly down her throat and through her breast, just under her skin. His hand on the nape of her neck gently guided her closer and she tilted her head to fit her mouth more fully to his.

  That soft, caressing motion, that endlessly pleasurable contact, was dizzying. She felt her world spinning, her breath shortening, and her knees going weak.

  His free arm slid around her waist and pulled her against him so that her breasts rested against his chest … that taut, hard-muscled, sun-bronzed expanse that lately had disrupted her sleep but enlivened her dreams. Her hands came up his sides and slid haltingly over him, savoring his hidden shape, relishing the private memory that guided her exploration.

  Joy rose in her like a bright bubble. His mouth on hers was soft and hard … commanding and yet entreating … giving as well as taki
ng pleasure.…

  NINE

  Voices and commotion from the front hall broke through her narrowing concentration. Hardwell and Hannah flashed into her mind, then Morgan, then the servants, then the people at the front gates.

  He must have heard it, too, for he released her the instant she began to pull away and he jerked back in the same instant. She whirled, caught her balance, fixed her gaze on the door, and walked straight into the arm of the sofa.

  “Ohhh.” The impact righted her vision and jolted her mental faculties back into operation. Her bare lips felt slightly swollen and unbearably conspicuous. Her cheeks were hot—probably crimson. Trembling noticeably, she paused to compose herself at the edge of the stairs, just out of sight of whoever was in the center hall.

  The sound of her pet name being crowed at the top of a familiar male voice sent a wave of guilty recognition through her.

  “Diaaamond Miiine! Where aaare you?”

  She stepped out from behind the newel posts and there in the middle of the entry stood none other than Paine Webster. He was dressed in evening clothes that clearly belonged to a bygone evening, his coat was rumpled, his collar stood open, his shirt was stained, and his tie was missing altogether. He stood with his feet well apart and his legs braced to keep him upright. Behind him, poor Jeffreys and one of the stable hands were trying valiantly to wrestle a huge streamer trunk through the open front doors.

  “Paine?” She hurried toward him, but stopped several feet away as she encountered overpowering smells of drink and sweat and stale tobacco smoke.

  “There you are!” His voice muted to a low roar at the sight of her. “My li’l Diamond mine. God—you look good enough to eat. Damn good thing we Webs-s-sters aren’t given to gout!” He lunged at her.

  “Paine!” She tried to evade him, but even in his inebriated state he had reflexes like a cat. He grabbed her up by the waist and swung her around and around until they both nearly toppled over. She pushed back enough to get her feet on the ground and stop them, but he refused to release her.